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Critical Thinking Training for Law Enforcement Recruits, Officers, & Leaders

It is time to incorporate robust critical thinking into your law enforcement agency at this revolutionary time in our history, in which a more humane approach to law enforcement will be increasingly required. We are aware of the various discussions focused on de-escalating violent situations involving law enforcement interactions. However, revolutionizing how law enforcement agencies operate is not simple, since changing the way law enforcement officers think is not simple. It is only by incorporating mandatory fairminded critical thinking courses/programs into law enforcement training across the board that we can bring about the long-term permanent change needed to deal with the crisis at hand, and to move into a more compassionate and charitable future. Our fellows and facilitators can lead onsite workshops for your law enforcement agency, and we are happy to put together a proposal for online short courses on critical thinking for your police officers and leaders (based on your circumstances and setting). Your law enforcement agency, using training in explicit fairminded critical thinking, can become a model for law enforcement agencies and police academies across the nation.

Recruits, Officers, and Leaders in Our Online Courses and On-Site Training Programs Will:

How police officers can learn to think and write critically

Officers must make life and death decisions and conduct investigations into criminal acts much like physicians investigate what’s ailing a patient.

Officers who are intelligent, able to think clearly under pressure, and compassionate are going to be effective because they are better able to make good decisions, detect suspicious behavior and see through lies.

Photo/In Public Safety

By Scot DuFour, alumnus, American Public University

Police work is a complex job that takes skilled, well-rounded and intelligent people to do well. Being proficient in the skills needed to master the job of a police officer takes a unique individual, along with special skills that are too often overlooked.

Every day, officers interact with suspects, witnesses, or victims. They respond to extremely complex situations that often involve frightened or angry people. To do so effectively requires top- notch critical thinking and writing skills , which are rarely focused on enough as part of law enforcement training.

Consider the best cop you have ever met or worked with. Did they possess notable speaking, listening and communication abilities ? Good cops can talk to anybody in a relatable way, whether that person is a victim, suspect or community member. They can use force if they need to, but often don’t have to. Their reports are well-written and they often avoid time in court because their investigations are top-notch.

What Skills Make a Good Officer?

Compiling a list of the requisite skills of a law officer could get lengthy. Broad categories include: good at problem solving, compassionate, possessing good judgment, observant, collaborative, resourceful and assertive.

To be a good investigator, officers need to have a sound understanding of law, healthy skepticism, critical thinking skills and the ability to control bias.

All these skills are of paramount importance but they are neglected in society generally , and police training does little to correct for that deficiency.

Police work is not like engineering or medicine; you do not need a specific college degree or trade-specific expertise to get hired. While many more officers today have college educations than in the past – which has been shown to be beneficial – officers learn a lot on the job.

Critical Thinking and Writing Skills

When a patrol cop or a detective charges a person with a crime they are required to gather probable cause. Probable cause means they must compile evidence that creates a reasonable belief the offender committed the crime. Officers basically make an argument that the suspect violated a particular statute and that argument is then submitted to further scrutiny by prosecutors, judges and ultimately a jury.

The entire process is based on forming sound arguments. Not forming a sound argument could mean potentially imprisoning the wrong person or coming to the wrong conclusion about the situation. Officers must have well-honed critical thinking skills in order to come to a sound conclusion and then make a bullet-proof argument.

Critical thinking is described as a persistent and skeptical mindset that always checks for accuracy and searches for potential flaws in the argument. This is an area that forensic science, because of its adherence to the scientific method, focuses on, but oftentimes cops and detectives don’t get the same education. Officers have to be trained how to look for the flaws in their evidence and reasoning during an investigation and strive to avoid confirmation bias.

Researchers from the University of Kent claim that critical writing skills teach people to present effective arguments in a clear and organized manner. Over time, writers learn to form arguments in a way that leads readers to a logical conclusion. In presenting their findings, the researchers even go so far as to compare good critical thinking skills to conducting a criminal investigation: you must investigate the problem, prosecute and defend ideas, cross-examine witnesses, and then reach an informed verdict.

Learning to be an effective writer teaches you to evaluate evidence and then effectively deliver an evidence-based argument for a certain conclusion. This needs to become a focus of police officer skill development.

Good Officers Avoid Jumping to Conclusions

In a selective observation experiment called the “Monkey Business Illusion” video, the viewer is asked to count the number of passes some students make with a basketball. A person in a gorilla suit then walks through the frame and beats its chest.

Many people are so focused on counting the passes that they miss the gorilla entirely.

Cops are constantly taught to try to break tunnel vision , but the lesson here is not just about tunnel vision. When someone is trained or asked to look for one particular thing, they often miss other very important clues about the totality of the situation. In these cases, officers may assume they know the cause of something before thoroughly analyzing the situation, a fallacy called “knowing at a glance” (Jackson, 2015, p. 111).

Knowing at a glance has consequences that include confirmation bias. Studies show that compared to just two decades ago, people today are far worse at being able to see things from different angles, synthesize information and utilize creative solutions (Jackson, 2015). This can be devastating to a police officer. It means potentially using deadly force when it isn’t needed or missing an important clue in an investigation.

We have to make a priority of seeing each new scenario with an open mind and not let our mind be clouded by our assumptions. In an investigation, that means checking your “facts” over and over.

Consider New Learning Methods to Teach Critical Skills

Harvard Medical School and many other medical schools have started using the arts as a way to train doctors in observation and perception. Medical students are asked to observe a piece of artwork for a period of time and note how their observations change over time. This program has shown an increase in the diagnostic skills of medical students by 10 percent, and a 40 percent increase in sophisticated and accurate notations on visual skills exams.[1]

Using the arts in medical schools was likely met with some resistance by doctors who believe there is little in common between advanced scientific knowledge and an artistic portrait, but the results speak for themselves. The value of the arts and humanities for improving critical thinking and enquiry skills cannot be understated. Philosophy majors, for example, tend to score higher on the GRE, LSAT, and MCAT than individuals from other majors.

How can this strategy be used in law enforcement? Officers must make life and death decisions and conduct investigations into criminal acts much like physicians investigate what’s ailing a patient. Law enforcement agencies should consider innovative and surprising techniques to train officers how to hone their observation skills. Such training also doesn’t have to be lengthy – reports show that medical students benefited significantly from only eight hours of such training.[1]

Every officer can benefit from enhanced skill-building aimed at improving critical thinking, writing, and observation abilities. While the vast majority of officers do not enjoy writing police reports , it is central to their work. Skillful writing teaches them how to form good arguments and think critically about investigations and evidence. Focusing on critical thinking and writing will enable officers to form good arguments and it will make them better, more well-rounded and effective officers.

1. Jackson M. Catching our eye: The alluring fallacy of knowing at a glance. In M. Bauerlein & A. Bellow (Eds.), The State of the American Mind (111-121). West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2015.

About the author : Scot DuFour has been a police officer since 2004 and is currently an investigator with the Aurora Police Department in Aurora, Colorado. Scot was previously a police officer in Arizona and a task force officer with the Drug Enforcement Administration. He is a graduate of American Public University with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in criminal justice . To contact the author, please email [email protected] . For more articles featuring insight from industry experts, subscribe to In Public Safety’s bi-monthly newsletter .

In Public Safety is an American Military University (AMU) sponsored blog that features analysis and commentary on issues relating to law enforcement, emergency management, fire services and national intelligence. This blog features in-depth discussions authored by leading experts with decades of experience in their field. To stay updated on blog posts and other news relevant to these sectors, please follow us on Facebook by “liking” AMU & APUS Public Safety Programs. You can also follow us on our sector-specific Twitter accounts: @AMUPoliceEd, @AMUFireEd, @AMUDisasterEd, @AMUIntelStudies

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Critical Thinking: A Core Task of Public Safety Employees

Posted By: publisher October 18, 2022

John G. Peters, Jr., Ph.D.

Critical thinking skills enable law enforcement personnel to analyze information and process it wisely in order to help determine the value of that information and make a decision.

There are too many documented instances of a suspect telling an officer, “I can’t breathe,” only to hear the officer say, “If you’re talking, you’re breathing.” Another example is a handcuffed suspect who tells an officer, “These handcuffs are too tight,” only to be told by the officer, “They weren’t made for comfort,” or “As you wear them, they will soften.” Because these are not isolated examples, you, too, can probably think of similar phrases you have heard from colleagues. One possible explanation for these types of responses is a lack of training in critical thinking .

College Web sites promise critical thinking will be taught to learners, yet few undergraduate programs include it. Professors claim to teach it, but few evaluate their students on it. Public safety academy and in-service instructors support its teaching, but few can give examples of where to find it in curricula or how it can be evaluated. Yet, in frustration, many administrators and/or colleagues will ask, “What was the officer thinking? Why didn’t (s)he do something? These officers can’t think today. Why won’t officers make better decisions?”

Public safety personnel are expected by the public, by their administrators and by others to engage in critical thinking when confronted with a situation. This presumption, which some people argue is indispensable for public safety personnel, reinforces it as a core task within the job description of public safety personnel. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) held in City of Canton, Ohio v. Harris , 489 U.S. 378 (1989) that municipalities have an affirmative duty to train employees in core tasks . Municipalities and/or policymakers which fail to conduct such training may be found to be “deliberately indifferent” when it can be shown that there was an obvious need for more or different training, and the failure to train was likely to result in the violation of a person’s constitutional rights. In short, it is vital to include education and training about critical thinking in recruit and in-service training programs.

Critical Thinking Defined

There are many critical thinking definitions, all focusing on the process of evaluating spoken or written statements. Critical thinking involves active listening, reading, evaluation of behavioral cues and signs, looking for hidden agendas, and thinking through the consequences of a person’s or a document’s claim(s). In other words, officers must carefully and deliberately determine if a person’s claim(s) should be accepted, rejected or if suspension of judgment is in order before deciding a person’s claim is true or false. Officers must also identify and consider the potential outcomes and consequences of ignoring such claims. For this article, the focus is limited to an individual’s claim.

Claims Which Require Critical Thinking

Almost every day, public safety personnel engage people who may make claims about what the officer or others are doing, have done and so forth. Examples include saying, “I can’t breathe,” “I didn’t take no drugs,” “I didn’t do anything,” “I didn’t hit him,” and “Stop using excessive force.” Of course, the last claim may come in the form of a written “Citizen Complaint” which requires interviewing the officer(s) involved and performing an investigation. Internal Investigators and administrators must then use their critical thinking skills to judge if the claims are true, but that discussion is for another article.

Critical Thinking Steps

Regardless of the critical thinking definition adopted and used, there are three basic steps involved in critical thinking:

1. Evaluating the information available and/or received from the individual or others and then assessing it (e.g., “I’m having difficulty breathing”). The officer must analyze and weigh the arguments and/or evidence presented. The officer must try to separate fact from opinion.

2. Determining if the claim appears to be true (err on the side of the claim) and

3. Forming a conclusion which, based on the officer’s reasoning, most likely, the person’s claim is true or false or, if there is not enough information, suspending judgment until more information has been obtained. Officers must also be aware of any conscious and/or unconscious bias creeping into their decision-making process.

Obviously, education, training, experience, and organizational culture may impact an officer’s ability to think critically about a claim made by individuals or others. Ask yourself, “Have I been trained to think critically?” Even more legally focused, has your employer trained you to use and apply the three critical thinking steps and also evaluate you on your conclusion when given situational-based scenarios? If “no,” your employer may have failed to train you and other employees on how to objectively evaluate a claim made by an individual and then reach a conclusion about it, in addition to creating a potential failure to train liability argument.

Asking officers how they used the three critical thinking steps to evaluate claims at the end of a scenario-based training exercise is important for the trainer to fully understand how officers arrived at their conclusions. If one or more conclusions are faulty and cannot be substantiated, remedial review and instruction can be immediately given to those officers before immersing them in another situational-based scenario.

Public safety instructors must include critical thinking concepts, steps and skills in their educating and training of recruits and experienced colleagues. Incorporate into written lesson plans critical thinking definitions, concepts, evaluation steps, applications, possible consequences, and competency-based testing before instructing officers about critical thinking. Doing so will help to make recruits and officers better problem solvers, decision makers and also help to defeat plaintiff claims of failing to train officers in the core task of critical thinking.

Instruction in critical thinking must be viewed as a continuing process and not as a project . Simply providing a single lecture on the subject is not enough. Critical thinking must be reinforced daily through roll call training, by field training officers and by supervisors. Debriefing of incidents involving suspects or other claims which were evaluated and decided by officers is another excellent way to review critical thinking steps and how officers made judgments about those claims.

Experience

An officer’s experience may enhance or hinder his/her ability to think critically in a variety of situations. Officers with more life experience or with critical thinking training may develop better critically thinking skill sets and thus better decision-making than those officers with limited experience. Experience may include education and training. But, don’t be fooled by a colleague who boasts 20 years of “on the job” experience because, for some people, it is nothing more than one year of experience duplicated for 19 more years. Life experiences are often subjective, limited in scope and may not be good indicators of critical thinking skills. Many people can think of family members or colleagues who will not make decisions because they are afraid of making a mistake; do not want to be held accountable; or who simply cannot critically think about and evaluate the information given to them, thus prohibiting them from deciding. One must remember, however, that the failure to make a decision is a decision to not make one!

Organizational Culture

The organizational culture where officers work or are assigned may impact their critical thinking skills. Wheelen and Hunger (2006) defined organizational culture as “the collection of beliefs, expectations and values learned and shared by the [organization’s] members and transmitted from one generation of employees to another . . . and generally reflects the [leaders] and the mission of the [organization].” The organizational culture also includes the subcultures throughout the organization.

Have you ever worked for a strict, by the book supervisor, only to be promoted or transferred to another unit where the supervisor was disinterested or worse, telling everyone that, whatever you do, the supervisor will have your back? Some workshop lawyers and supervisors tell attendees or subordinates not to worry about using force because, with a consult, they can help with writing a report justifying it. Aside from being unethical, this attitude helps develop an unhealthy organizational subculture which can eliminate or dilute the importance of developing and using critical thinking skills.

Organizational subculture can be defined as the set attitudes and values which shape employee behavior. The subculture commands our attention because it is generally seen as a major obstacle to reform and, thus, a powerful force working to erode any reforms which are in fact achieved, such as education and training in critical thinking. Often within an organizational subculture, there are unwritten ground rules which produce the “actual” culture of the organization, unit and/or shift (e.g., in this unit, we do not follow policy). As previously mentioned, if officers know their supervisor will support them regardless of what they do, they may not practice critical thinking because event outcomes will not be viewed as negative by the supervisor.

Critical Thinking in Today’s Law Enforcement Environment

Every week, there are stories claiming public safety officers did not act when they should have acted (think Uvalde, Texas); acted when they should not have acted (think George Floyd); or did not critically think about their actions (think TASER ® deployment on a person drenched in gasoline). Increasingly, public safety officers are being criminally charged and civilly sued. It also appears that more officers are losing their criminal cases and being sent to jail (think Minneapolis officers who did not intervene and stop their supervisor’s force).

A growing number of states and municipalities are passing legislation which implicitly demands public safety officers critically think before acting or they may face criminal charges given a negative outcome (think death or serious injury). For example, in 2022, California Government Code Section 7286.5 changed regarding positional asphyxia. The law now requires law enforcement officers to reasonably monitor a person for signs of asphyxia. The law also prohibits agencies using or authorizing prisoner transport methods which involve a substantial risk of positional asphyxia. Obviously, training on positional asphyxia, asphyxia, asphyxiation, critical thinking, and the law must now be incorporated into the academy and in-service educational and training curricula.

Monitoring requirements for a restrained person involve an officer’s use of critical thinking skills. Should the restrained person claim breathing difficulty, the officer must decide if the claim is valid or if it is a trick to get the officer closer to them in order to attack. Similarly, officers must now critically think about how to position a prisoner for transport prior to the transport. Two Boulder County (CO) Sheriff’s Deputies were criminally convicted and are serving their jail sentences after a Boulder City officer asked them to transport a young male who was severely intoxicated. During the transport to an alcohol treatment center in a police van, the young man died.

Call to Action

Trainers, educators and administrators of public safety employees must educate and train learners, recruits and in-service personnel in the core task of critical thinking, including the steps involved in arriving at appropriate decisions, using a variety of topics with associated claims. Leadership and management must also continuously review these steps with subordinates so they remember and apply them. Examples may include using actual or hypothetical case studies, reviewing examples of poor judgment when facing claims, and so forth. Education and training on critical thinking must be an ongoing process . Employees need to be educated and trained about critical thinking concepts, and then be given the opportunity to apply the steps of critical thinking to evaluate a claim and to develop a conclusion, erring on the side of the claim, regardless of the organizational culture or subculture. Case studies and/or scenario-based training are two safe environments to evaluate critical thinking skills. Holding employees accountable without first educating and training them is unethical, unfair and morale depleting. In today’s changing society, employers, educators, trainers, leaders, and managers can no longer ignore the need for education and training about critical thinking and its application to hypothetical and to real claims, including assessing employee critical thinking skill sets, judgment and decision making.

John G. Peters, Jr., Ph.D. is a frequent contributor to Police and Security News . He serves as president of the internationally recognized training firm, Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, Inc., and as Executive Director of The Americans for Effective Law Enforcement. An instructional designer, John has developed online programs for several universities, including a course on critical thinking. He has taught leadership, management, critical thinking, research methods, and statistics at the undergraduate and graduate levels. A judicially qualified expert witness, he has testified in international (Hong Kong), federal and state courts about use of force, arrest-related deaths, training, and policies.

Critical Thinking: Using Social and Emotional Intelligence in Public Safety

by Rex Scism | December 23, 2022

I started working in law enforcement during the late 1980s. At that time, the agencies I worked for were located in busy jurisdictions where we ran from one call to the next. Like many organizations, we were shorthanded. Communication in the field was short and sweet. We took care of business and moved on to the next call for service without giving much thought to human relationships. Community policing was a relatively new term. We knew the importance of forging positive relationships. But time was the primary focus.

Fast-forward several decades and time is still an important factor when juggling the myriad responsibilities found in public safety. The relationship factor is equally important and effective communication is essential to accomplishing the mission. Early in my career, I was extremely task-oriented while handling calls and dealing with the public. As time went on, I realized there was much more to a call than a “ just the facts, ma’am ” approach. People want to be heard. But communication is complicated .

During the past decade we’ve heard more about social and emotional intelligence in public safety and how these competencies contribute to enhancing critical thinking, while helping us establish positive relationships. Now, public safety professionals are even required to attend training that focuses on developing these skills. But what are emotional and social intelligence really about and why are they necessary in today’s climate? To answer that question, we need to explore how these competencies directly relate to public safety.

Emotional Intelligence

Spiritual master Dr. Amit Ray is often quoted as saying, “Emotional intelligence is the foundation of leadership. It balances flexibility with toughness, vision with passion, compassion with justice.” Psychology Today defines emotional intelligence (EI) as “… the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others.” Professor Gregory Saville stresses that becoming emotionally mature and confident are necessary prerequisites to influencing other people’s emotions.

It’s easy to get caught up in the minutia of a busy day while failing to consider the human dynamic that can make or break a situation.

It’s no mystery that today’s public safety professionals need to have well-developed human skills and be able to communicate effectively, while managing both inter- and intradepartmental relationships. Dr. David Black notes how “emotional intelligence isn’t something we’re born with; it’s a tactical skill set we must develop.” Dr. Michael Pittaro from American Military University takes it a step further and identifies four critical skills for developing social and emotional intelligence in public safety:

1. Self-Awareness : Requires knowing our own strengths, weaknesses, emotions and circumstances that impact how we feel in certain situations. 2. Self-Management: Involves controlling our emotions, especially in situations where we might spontaneously respond in a disruptive manner. It also includes self-monitoring and knowing when it’s appropriate to act. 3. Social Awareness : Requires empathy for the feelings, needs and concerns of others. This is a big factor in building rapport since it involves understanding a person’s mood or behavior in a way that improves the relationship. 4. Relationship Management : This expands on social awareness by developing bonds and making people feel supported and understood.

In public safety, social competencies such as conflict management , empathy and leadership are also important. These skill sets are required on nearly every call for service. There is a strong relationship between emotional intelligence and building trust in the communities we serve. And to make the most of this valuable competency, it’s also necessary to clearly understand complex social relationships—which in turn requires an understanding of social intelligence.

Social Intelligence

Bnidhu and Snigh’s research identified social intelligence (SI) as “the ability to understand the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of persons, including oneself … and to act appropriately upon that understanding.” Simply put, SI refers to our ability to read other people and understand their intentions and motivations—making strong human connections. When human beings make these connections, they are better equipped to adjust to new situations or adopt alternative courses of action based on a variety of situationally dependent variables.

Savvy public safety professionals use this important competency on a daily basis without even thinking. But it’s important to note SI is another learned competency. We develop this skillset through experiences and interactions with people. As Dr. Ronald Riggio points out, we learn “from the successes and failures in social settings.” Some key elements of SI include:

Verbal fluency and conversational skills : This largely involves being tactful and appropriate—working or reading the room, as they say.
Knowing social roles, rules, and scripts : Also known as “playing the game,” this social intelligence element involves conforming to the unwritten rules or norms that govern how humans interact with one another in social or group settings.
Effective listening skills : Being a good listener goes without saying in this industry, but human beings are hardwired to care more about our own thoughts, opinions and feelings. In other words, we are selfish and must work to set aside our own basic needs to connect with others, especially in situations where emotions are at play.
Impression management : Those working in public safety are keenly aware of the importance of making a good impression. There is obviously a delicate balance between managing the image you portray and how it comes across to others. How you wear the uniform , your level of self-confidence, and skill competencies all play a role in how you professionally interact with both your peers and the public while on the job.

In public safety, we must be able to quickly adjust to new situations and adopt effective courses of action that allow us to connect with the people we serve. How do emotional intelligence and social intelligence competencies relate to critical thinking in public safety ?

The Relationship to Critical Thinking

Effective critical thinking requires us to overcome individual biases and false assumptions. How many times have you responded to a call for service and immediately drew conclusions about what occurred or hastily decided upon a necessary course of action, only to significantly change direction after hearing all the facts? We’ve all been there. Our experience and training largely contribute to our success, but it can also inhibit our ability to rationalize when we’re faced with new challenges in unfamiliar territory.

In public safety, social competencies such as conflict management, empathy and leadership are required on nearly every call for service.

As Phillips and Burrell point out, “critical thinking and effective problem-solving is an optimal process to reach well-thought-out decisions.” This level of analysis is paramount if we wish to actually solve a problem without settling on some mediocre alternative. And it requires us to have a strong understanding of our own capabilities relative to both social and emotional intelligence. Critical thinking allows us to:

Develop paths to reasoned judgment when variables in a situation change or evolve.
Understand how to build group consensus around complex issues (or at least engage in conversation directed toward problem resolution).
Learn to encourage and ensure consideration of breakthrough or “outside the box” ideas or thinking.

The key centers on enhancing our ability to solve problems constructively after careful consideration of rational alternatives. This also requires some level of analytical assessment as we determine which course of action is necessary for a given situation.

If we consider critical thinking from a social and emotional intelligence standpoint, we also need to deal with some internal noise. Factor in your own egocentrism and be realistic about the impact of individual emotions on decision making. We also need to be aware of group influences in our lives. Public safety professionals have a lot in common and it’s not unusual to develop behaviors that are encouraged within that group. This may or may not be beneficial when dealing with certain members of the public. Awareness is the key. As India yoga guru Sadhguru said, “When your mind is full of assumptions, conclusions, and beliefs, it has no penetration, it just repeats past impressions.”

Making Your Job Easier

Critical thinking often requires us to overcome what we think we know about a given situation and approach it with an open mind. This means not only managing our emotions and understanding the emotions of others, but also placing those emotions and feelings in the proper context. As with anything, it’s crucial we are self-aware of our own biases, our capacity to understand others, and the limitations to effective communication.

Although it’s tempting to rush through that next call for service in the interest of time, take a moment to slow down, regroup, and consider critical social and emotional competencies that I promise will make your job easier. Most of this is grounded in common sense, but it’s easy to get caught up in the minutia of a busy day while failing to consider the human dynamic that can make or break a situation.

Psychology Today . (nd). Emotional Intelligence. Accessed 11/19/22 from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/emotional-intelligence
Saville G. (2015) Emotional Intelligence in Policing. The Police Chief . Accessed 11/19/22 from https://tmctraining.net/wp-content/uploads/Article_PoliceChief-EI-in-Policing-Saville-2015.pdf.
Black D. (2022) The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Public Safety. Cordico . Accessed 11/19/22 from https://www.cordico.com/2022/05/04/role-of-emotional-intelligence-in-public-safety/ .
Pittaro M. (2017) How emotional intelligence benefits correctional officers. Corrections1 . Accessed 11/19/22 from https://www.corrections1.com/products/training-products/articles/how-emotional-intelligence-benefits-correctional-officers-6ZmCe3nVhX1CLFIF/ .
Bnidhu J. and Snigh P. (2022). The Structure and Cultivation of Social Intelligence. Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities . 4(3):58.
Riggioi R. (2014) What is Social Intelligence? Why Does it Matter? Psychology Today . Accessed 11/19/22 from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201407/what-is-social-intelligence-why-does-it-matter .
Phillips W and Burrell D. (2008) Decision-making skills that encompass a critical thinking orientation for law enforcement professionals. International Journal of Police Science and Management. 11(2).

CAPTAIN REX M. SCISM (Ret.) is a 32-year law enforcement veteran and former director of research and development for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. He also had a successful military career, retiring from the Missouri Army National Guard after 20 years of service. Mr. Scism served as a public safety and private sector consultant and instructor for over 20 years. He formerly served as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Criminal Justice for both Columbia College and the University of Central Missouri, and is a frequent contributor to multiple sources about various public safety topics. Mr. Scism is a graduate of the FBI National Academy’s 249th Session and currently serves as a content developer for Lexipol.

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Decision-making skills that encompass a critical thinking orientation for law enforcement professionals

2009, International Journal of Police Science & Management

INTRODUCTION Law enforcement and public safety pro-fessionals risk their lives daily to protect and save the general public from potential and immediate dangers. Since 1993, the United States has been affected by many domestic terrorist attacks (eg Timothy McVeigh and the ...

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This study explored the role of age and gender in the critical thinking skills of trainees of Police institutions in Nigeria. The design adopted for this study was a descriptive survey design. The population of this study was 14,320 police trainees enrolled in various police training institutions in Nigeria. The random proportionate sampling strategy was used to select 375 respondents from the six (6) police training institutions comprising both male and female trainees. The instrument used to collect data for this study was the “Owolabi Critical Thinking Test (OCTT) (2011)” which is a standardised test. The reliability of the OCTT was established at 0.71 using the Cronbach’s alpha. Three research questions and two null hypotheses were raised to guide the study. In this study, mean scores and percentages were used for the analysis of the research questions. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance using t-test. The findings showed poor critical thinking ability among...

Annals of Emergency Medicine

Pat Croskerry

Stephen A Morreale

Executives and managers of police agencies are depended upon to deal with crisis and change in their environments and in their organizations. The decisions made by these leaders are distinct from those on the spot decisions often made by law enforcement officers, correctional officers or court personnel in field situations. In most instances, there is time to reflect, assess and collect data in order to make more informed decisions. Unlike line-level personnel, administrators are most often positioned to engage in strategic and long-term decision-making as opposed to crisis-driven decision-making. Engaging in a systematic decision-making process can be beneficial if the process includes collecting and evaluating information and data, giving other stakeholders the opportunity to review and provide input, and reviewing previous “best practices” in organizational decision-making The paper sets forth the findings of a limited exploratory, qualitative study aimed at identifying processes used in decision-making by police administrators. The paper also includes recommendations to enhance the decision-making processes used by police administrators. By police administrators, we are referring to those individuals who have the authority to make policy in a police organization versus managers who are situated between the street-level staff and the organization administrator. The suggestion of strategic planning has overwhelming and negative connotations to many criminal justice practitioners. However, many of the tenants used for strategic planning have applicability to decision-making. By connecting the results of this exploration to theories of change and action, this paper identifies systematic approaches that can be used in the police administrator decision-making process. Overview

Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology

Metodi Hadji-Janev

Journal of Criminal Justice

Janet Starkes

Making decisions under stress: Implications for individual and team training.

Marvin Cohen

Journal of History Culture and Art Research

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Canan Yıldıran

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2019 – MCJA Mandatory: Critical Thinking in Law Enforcement

by Meaghan O'Leary | Aug 20, 2020

This training is based upon, and consistent with: MCJA 2019 Mandatory Lesson Plan: Critical Thinking in Law Enforcement

Instructional Goal

It is vitally important for law enforcement officers to be objective when dealing with any given situation. By thinking critically about the facts before them, officers can avoid making errors in judgement about the situation. Utilizing critical thinking techniques allows for decision making, not allowing previous experiences, biases, shortcuts, or rationalizing inappropriate actions to get in the way of a possible better outcome for the call for service they are handling.

Performance Objectives

1.1.1 Define critical thinking as it relates to Law Enforcement.

1.1.2 Identify three benefits of critical thinking.

1.1.3 List three influences that affect critical thinking.

1.1.4 Identify 5 obstacles to critical thinking.

1.1.5 List the 4 components of Emotional Intelligence.

1.1.6 Explain the relationship between stress and Critical Thinking ability.

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This webinar consists of two-parts and will cover the Critical Thinking Model P.I.E.T.O. (Priorities, Intelligence, Environment, Tools/Tactics/Technology and Officer Instincts) as a means for the Tactical Commander, Team leader, or Operator to use as a mental guide in the decision-making process during tactical operations to make justifiable, ethical, and legal decisions. The student will be required to discuss a tactical plan based on the principles taught in the first session. The first webinar session will cover principles of the P.I.E.T.O. Critical Thinking Model. The instructor will present in detail this concept and how it can be utilized in the tactical environment as well as other law enforcement operations. There is a requirement for the student to develop a tactical plan based on a problem presented during this session. The student will have one week to complete the assignment. During that one week break, an intelligence inject will be delivered via email, requiring a change in decisions and tactical response and the use of different tools.
Individual	Fire/EMS	Retired	Associate	Agency	Non-Member Sworn LE
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i HIGHER ORDER, CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN NATIONAL POLICE ACADEMY COURSE DEVELOPMENT

August 2011
Thesis for: Instructional Design for Online Learning

Webster University

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Critical Thinking

Rethinking domestic law enforcement in the fentanyl crisis

Full Transcript

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Beau kilmer , beau kilmer codirector - rand drug policy research center, senior policy researcher, professor of policy analysis - pardee rand graduate school roland neil , and roland neil associate behavioral/social scientist - rand vanda felbab-brown vanda felbab-brown director - initiative on nonstate armed actors , co-director - africa security initiative , senior fellow - foreign policy , strobe talbott center for security, strategy, and technology.

September 10, 2024

Drug arrests are a big part of policing in the U.S. Between 2010 and 2019, they were the largest category of all arrests and amounted to some 1.6 million annually.
Drug-induced homicide laws lack evidence of effectiveness and may deter people from calling for help during overdoses.
Equipping and training police officers to use naloxone can help reverse opioid overdoses and save lives.
37 min read

In this episode, host Vanda Felbab-Brown talks with RAND researchers Beau Kilmer and Roland Neil about U.S. domestic law enforcement responses to the fentanyl crisis. Kilmer and Neil highlight a decline in drug arrests, particularly for cannabis, in the United States, but note a surge in fentanyl-related seizures. They also discuss various alternatives to incarceration for specific drug-related crimes, including police-led deflection programs, and they cast skepticism on new punitive approaches, such as drug-induced homicide laws.

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Send feedback email to [email protected] .

FELBAB-BROWN: I am Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. And this is The Killing Drugs . With more than 100,000 Americans dying of drug overdoses each year, the fentanyl crisis in North America, already the most lethal drug epidemic ever in human history, remains one of the most significant and critical challenges we face as a nation. In this podcast and its related project, I am collaborating with leading experts on this devastating public health and national security crisis to find policies that can save lives in the United States and around the world.

On today’s episode, I am exploring domestic law enforcement approaches to the fentanyl crisis. My guests are Doctor Beau Kilmer, the co-director of the Rand Drug Policy Research Center, as well as a senior policy researcher at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. And Doctor Roland Neil, a social scientist at the RAND Corporation. The project paper is titled “Criminal legal intervention in the age of the overdose crisis: Some noteworthy trends and policy changes.”

Beau, thank you so much for joining me.

KILMER: Thank you so much for having us, Vanda.

FELBAB-BROWN: And, Roland, terrific to have you here as well. Thank you.

NEIL: Good to be here, thanks.

FELBAB-BROWN: So, the U.S. response to drugs is frequently criticized as extremely heavy on arrests of people who use drugs—a core element of the much decried “war on drugs.” How many people in the United States, Beau, are actually arrested for drug offenses these days? And how much has that changed?

KILMER: Yeah, so, it’s a lot harder to figure that out than you would imagine. So, we know that from about 2010 to 2019, drug arrests accounted for the largest category of all arrests. So, it was roughly about 1.6 million a year nationally. And that accounted for anywhere between 12 to 16% of all arrests. So, this is a big part of policing in the United States.

However, there’s reason to believe that that’s actually an underestimate. Because when those data are actually are submitted to the FBI, there’s something called the hierarchy rule, meaning that if you get arrested for two different types of offenses, they only report the most serious one. So, if you got arrested for robbery as well as possession of methamphetamine, only the robbery is going to get reported. So, we believe that those numbers are underestimates.

And the other thing that makes it a bit confusing is at the national level, they take all these drug arrests and they put them into four categories. They’ve got those that are related to—they call it marijuana, by cannabis. Another one for opium and cocaine and their derivatives. Then there’s a third category called “other dangerous drugs.” Then there’s a fourth category called synthetics.

And so, it raises some really interesting questions. We tend to think of these other non-narcotic dangerous drugs, we tend to think of that generally as methamphetamine. But it might be the case that some places might categorize that as synthetic. Or what if there was an arrest where there was both heroin and fentanyl? where would that get classified?

But we do know that kind of within these four different categories, obviously over time the number of cannabis arrests have gone down dramatically, because of legalization and kind of changes in approaches. We have seen that for that other dangerous drug category that between 2010 and 2019, there actually was an increase. And we believe that’s largely attributable to meth.

What’s interesting, though, is if we look at the categories that we think fentanyl could possibly get classified into—either opium slash cocaine or that synthetic category—you know, there really wasn’t much of a change. While you had overdose deaths related to fentanyl spiking, you didn’t really see much of a change there.

And that was through 2019. And I stop there because obviously, with COVID in 2020, that kind of affects your trends.

But beginning in 2021, the FBI then changed how they collected and reported data on drug arrests. So, what that means is for 2021, ‘22, and 2023, there’s going to be some issues there, some missing data. But I do think that these changes overall are going to make it easier for us to assess what’s been happening with specific drug trends. And fortunately, I had Roland, I was able to work with him and he kind of dug into this new data system. So, he’ll have some better insights on this for the more recent years.

FELBAB-BROWN: Roland, I am interested to hear that. But let me just reiterate something you said, Beau. One point six million people, at least until 2019, arrested yearly for drug possession or for drug offenses, of which drug possession would be one. That’s a very large number.

KILMER: Yeah. And I should be very clear. That was 1.6 million, roughly, arrests. So, you know, some people do get arrested multiple times. But as I said, I really think that’s an underestimate because of that hierarchy rule.

FELBAB-BROWN: So, Roland, what has changed?

NEIL: It’s hard to say nationally what’s changed because of this change in the data recording system that’s been used. So, what we did for our paper is we looked at the 17 states which have been reporting to NIBRS, which is the National Incident-Based Reporting System, which is the new system. Some started using it before 2021. So, we looked at the states that had the vast majority of their population being covered by this reporting system going back to 2017. So, we looked at from 2017 to 2022 and what happened to arrest for drug offenses for these 17 states. And for both drug possession and for drug sales arrest, they fell by about a third over the course of this period.

The decline in overall numbers is, again, overwhelmingly driven by the decline in cannabis arrest. But it was actually a pretty widespread decline, especially once you start looking at 2019 onwards. The decline existed for every category of drugs that we looked at. So, methamphetamine arrests were falling, opioids, cocaine. And again, similar to what we saw with the with the analysis from earlier years there was no spike in opioids during this time period, which coincided with the spike in overdose deaths due to fentanyl.

And one thing which I will say, right? is those 17 states are not necessarily nationally representative. We don’t know what the number would have been for the other 50 states. Just as one example, two of these states, Oregon and Washington, had periods during this phase in which they had decriminalized the possession of drugs. And so, we don’t know if those numbers hold generally. But that’s what we do know about the states that we have good data on in recent years.

FELBAB-BROWN: And we’ll talk more about decriminalization in the northwest on the show and also have an entire episode and paper dedicated to that show with Professor Keith Humphreys.

Beau, let me come back to you just on this basic data and what we know, despite the data challenges. What can you tell us about trends in crimes related to drug use or drug possession? So, property crimes, how frequent are they? Many people would certainly praise the fact that arrests for drug offenses have declined. What about other crimes associated with that?

KILMER: Yeah, no, that’s an important point. When we think about the role of policing in drugs, those drug-specific offenses for possession and sales, that’s only one component of this. And obviously there are some individuals who, you know, when they’re using drugs or when they’re selling drugs, they are engaging in other types of crime.

But I want to make it very clear, just because someone uses drugs or sell drugs, that doesn’t mean they’re committing other crimes. Especially with respect to those who are kind of heavy users of opioids as well as methamphetamine, there’s some pretty strong research suggesting that there is a positive association with engaging in other crimes, especially property crimes, as a way of trying to get income, in order to be able to purchase more substances.

And it’s really hard to figure out the exact numbers. And so, I did some work a couple of years ago. It was focused on 2019. And our best estimates were for 2019 in the United States there probably were anywhere between 200,000 to 300,000 arrests that were specific to opioids. So, possession or sales, and that would include prescription opioids as well as heroin as well as fentanyl. But our best assessment was that if you were to look at the total number of property crimes committed by those with the opioid use disorder, it was going to be a lot larger than that. Multiple times. And so, that’s an important component when we’re thinking about the overall consequences here in terms of the burden on police. It’s not just the drug-specific offenses. It’s these other ones as well.

FELBAB-BROWN: And it’s also very important for designing policy as well. So, you don’t correct bad policies in a way that exacerbates other problems. So, Roland, another very important criticism of the U.S. domestic counter-narcotics policies for many years has been that they disproportionately target, arrest, and incarcerate Black people and other people of color. What is the situation with incarceration like today with respect to racial justice, racial equity?

NEIL: Yeah, so, starting off first with just overall patterns in the use of incarceration for drug offending. If we’re looking at states, which are the largest, they hold most inmates in state prisons, numbers have fallen from around a quarter of a million in 2010 down to about 175,000 in 2019. And with the COVID pandemic they fell further by further few tens of thousands, though it’s not entirely clear what those numbers are currently.

And one thing which is interesting about this decline is it’s not only the size of it, right? from a quarter million down to less than 175,000. But it’s that this decline was overwhelmingly driven by a reduction in incarceration of African Americans. During that time period, incarceration levels for white inmates in prison for drug offenses fell by about 8%, as opposed to 54% for African Americans. And the decline for Hispanic individuals fell in between those two. So, there’s been not only a large decrease in the use of state prisons for drug offenses. But that’s been one that has benefited in the sense African Americans and Hispanics, disproportionately.

That being said, compared to the size of the population in the U.S., the rates are still disproportionately high for these racial and ethnic groups.

And one further caveat with that, which is that focusing on state prisons ignores federal prisons. And for most aspects of the U.S. criminal justice system, federal prisons play a very, very small role because they don’t account for many of the prisoners. When you’re talking about drug offenses, that’s actually not true. They’re a pretty sizable population. But we weren’t able to do this same sort of analysis looking at the racial distribution of federal prisoners, nor for jails.

But overall, to simplify, it looks like the use of all of these forms of incarceration for drugs has been reducing over the past decade, have been declining. And where we can tell it looks like that has been disproportionately good news for people of color.

FELBAB-BROWN: Who have for a long time disproportionately suffered from too skewed enforcement toward them. So, Beau, Roland talked about incarceration, you’ve talked about incarceration as one component of law enforcement responses to domestic retail market as well as use. What about alternatives to incarceration? What are policy approaches there, and what are the trends and the picture with them today?

KILMER: So, I want to make it clear, I mean, while incarceration is a really important part of this story, if we look at most people who get convicted of a drug possession offense, most of them are either sentenced to probation or a fine. So, most of them aren’t sentenced to prison.

Now, that said, this is something that Roland raised, it might be the case that after you get arrested, you might spend a couple of days in jail, and then you’ll have your court case and then you’ll be sentenced to probation. And so, this is where it would be really useful to get better data on the time that people spend in jail and for what reasons. That’s something and so not only for those that are sentenced, but also those that are held there kind of pretrial.

But the bigger picture is, look, most of most of the action here is with respect to probation. And probation in general is, you know, is run at the county level, you know, throughout the United States. And so, there’s a tremendous amount of variation in terms of how probation departments work, what types of supervision they have, the types of conditions. You know, some places might say as part of your probation you may actually have to go to drug treatment or attend self-help meetings.

Another component to this is drug testing. It’s very common for people, especially those that have been convicted on drug offenses, to be subject to drug testing. And for those individuals who end up missing a scheduled drug test or testing positive for drugs, they can then be violated. And sometimes those violations can lead to having probation revoked, and then the person ends up in prison. So, even though they weren’t sentenced to prison, they could end up there.

And we also see this when we talk about probation, that’s kind of an alternative in general to incarceration. We also see this for parole. So, parole tends to be—that’s the supervision in a lot of states, that happens after you’re incarcerated. Same thing with respect to those testing positive and or missing tests.

And that’s one of the big things, as we were trying to crunch all the numbers for this chapter, trying to get a sense of how many people are actually being sentenced to prison because of a positive or missed drug test on probation or parole? And that was that’s very hard to figure out.

FELBAB-BROWN: Have you been able to get any sense of that?

KILMER: No. I think we found some data maybe for Denver for a couple of years. But this is something systematically we need to be collecting. Because if we begin thinking about doing the policy analysis for various types of alternatives potentially to prohibition, this is the type of information you need. So, we were able to talk about general trends there, but this was really a big glaring hole in terms of how we understand what’s happening with substance use and incarceration.

FELBAB-BROWN: Roland, what effects has the fentanyl epidemic in the U.S. had on police efforts toward domestic drug markets and on laws related to incarceration for drug use and drug dealing?

NEIL: Yeah, so, this is surprisingly difficult to answer as well. And one reason is that we looked at a lot of different trends when we were doing our research, and they’re pretty rarely separated out specifically by fentanyl. So, for a lot of data that you’ll have on drug offending in the criminal legal system, it’s just going to be for drug offenses overall. Or if it’s broken apart, it might be broken apart, say, by grouping all opioids together. And we know that we’ve had a changing situation with the opioid epidemic over the past decade or so where heroin and other forms of opioids have been getting sort of replaced by fentanyl. And so, it’s somewhat hard to say.

But what we can say is a few things. So, one is that the amount in terms of weight of seizures of fentanyl has been going up massively. Like, in Customs and Border Patrol data it was not recorded in 2016. In 2017 they started recording it and there was essentially none. And since then, it’s just been going up massively every single year until at least 2023, which is the most recent data that we had available.

Now, it’s hard to go from seizures to knowing what that means in terms of law enforcement, because it could just be a function of there’s more fentanyl being trafficked across borders. And also, it could reflect the fact that increasingly pills are being trafficked and pills tend to weigh more for a given amount of pure drugs. And so, when we just look at those trends, we can’t really say what’s that mean about how law enforcement is changing. But that’s one thing which we do know, which is that they are seizing more weight of fentanyl. And it’s a lot more than it was just a few years ago.

Another trend which we can say is that the DEA is unlike other agencies that we have data on in which we can see specifically the Drug Enforcement Agency. They specifically record fentanyl arrest. And in that data, we can see that back about a decade ago, they didn’t really make any fentanyl arrests at all. And it’s been growing strongly every year since then, although it still remains a pretty small part of their overall arrest activities.

But the last thing which I’ll say about the trends is often the absence of notable spikes. So, even when we’re looking at drug offenses overall and how they translate into incarceration or to arrest, it is really interesting that during this time in which fentanyl overdoses have spiked and these seizures, there has not been a corresponding increase in what we would have thought of as many of the conventional ways that the criminal legal system responds to drug offending.

And in terms of how laws have changed, we sort of came across three things which we can talk about more if you like that we focused on. One set of things is called “Good Samaritan” laws. Another are called “drug induced homicide” laws. And the last was experiences in the decriminalization of drugs as was seen in Oregon’s case. So, those are the sort of changes we’ve seen to laws.

FELBAB-BROWN: Yeah. Absolutely, Roland. So, it sounds like there is a break with the fentanyl epidemic in traditional responses in the U.S. Less heavy-handed law enforcement is the only response. And new aspects of law enforcement coming up, such as the Good Samaritan laws. Tell us about those, please.

NEIL: So, what those are these are laws that offer some legal protection from being prosecuted if you alert first responders, you call first responders, in response to an overdose for medical purposes. So, if you or someone else is overdosing and you call first responder, it will offer some immunity. Now, there’s variety in these laws. Some of them only apply to the specific person who is having the overdose. Others it’s bystanders. For some of them, it’s only for the specific drug that the person is overdosing on. For others, it’s other offenses that might be associated with that incident. For others, it’s vulnerability from checking their warrants and arresting them on those. And so, there’s a lot of variety in these laws.

But what’s interesting about them is that they’re a very new and very widespread innovation. So, the first one started in 2007 in New Mexico. And as of May 2024, which is the last time that I checked, it’s now the case that all states have Good Samaritan laws with the exception of Wyoming. So, these have gone from zero to almost every single state over a pretty short period of time.

And the evidence on their effectiveness so far is mixed. One study found that places with Good Samaritan laws tended to have 15% fewer overdose deaths, whereas there’s some other studies that found no effects. So, there isn’t much research on these in terms of the effectiveness. But it seems like they could be beneficial. There’s no evidence to suggest that they’re harmful. In that sense it seems like they are a good idea.

And another thing which I’d like to point out about these is that there’s often knowledge gaps. So, there’s some research which points out that in places with Good Samaritan laws, both people who use drugs and police officers often don’t know about them or are not willing to play along. And so, even if you have these laws on the books, there’s this question about successful implementation, because if they’re going to work, the people who are relevant to this need to know about it and need to need to follow these laws. And so, that’s sort of an interesting area that should be explored more is figuring out which forms of these Good Samaritan laws are most effective and trying to think through what can be done so that they are implemented in an effective way.

FELBAB-BROWN: Absolutely. So, the design of policies matters a great deal but so does their implementation. And the two interact in effectiveness. But it sounds like there is at least no harm being done by the Good Samaritan laws and potentially benefits. Beau, Roland mentioned another policy innovation, and those are drug-induced homicide laws. Please explain to us what they are and what kind of effects have they had?

KILMER: So, the incarceration sentences for supplying drugs, I mean, even at the retail level, they can be pretty severe. And some states have passed what we would call drug-induced homicide laws, meaning that if you supply, either you sell or you give drugs to someone and they overdose and die, then it can lead to potentially a sentence enhancement or another charge. It can lead to even more time behind bars.

And while there were some places that had some of these drug-induced homicide laws before we started dealing with illegally manufactured fentanyl, you’ve seen more states kind of adopt them and even in the states where you had them, they’re being used more often.

And I want to make it clear this isn’t just red, conservative states. You’re seeing this in blue states as well. There were discussions about this in San Francisco. So, this isn’t just a red state issue.

So, while you see more places implementing or kind of passing these laws, we’ve got to be really careful here. Because from a theoretical perspective, they make very little sense. Because what we know about the idea of deterring individuals, we know that deterrence is it’s you’re much more likely to deter someone based on kind of the certainty in the swiftness of the sanction, not the severity. What these drug-induced homicide laws do is they ramp up the severity, and they also add in a bunch of uncertainty. Whether or not if someone had naloxone there. So, from a theoretical perspective, it just doesn’t make much sense.

And also empirically, there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that they provide any benefit. I will say there was one study that was published that suggested that they were beneficial, and that study ended up being so flawed it had to be retracted.

And the third reason why I’m really skeptical of these laws is that you can imagine that they could create disincentives for people to call the police if there is an overdose. So, from a theoretical perspective it makes very little sense. There’s no empirical evidence. If anything, it seems like it can make things worse.

FELBAB-BROWN: And yet they are popular with politicians as a response.

KILMER: Yeah. No, and I understand that too. I, I mean imagine you’re a politician and you’re talking to a family member of someone who overdosed, and they want you to take some kind of action—please do it. Well, ratcheting up sentences in a lot of places it’s an easy thing to do and makes it look like you’ve done something. But we need to be careful about equating that with are they actually making a difference, a positive difference.

FELBAB-BROWN: And in this case, it seems it’s not just neutral but could potentially be making things worse.

So, Roland, the opposite side it’s not to be ratcheting up sentences, but to be thinking about other nonpunitive approaches. What is the effectiveness, what do we know about the effectiveness, of drug deflection programs? And also, please explain to our listeners what those are.

NEIL: So, what we focused on in our report was specifically on police-led deflection programs. So, what these are, are situations where a police department, instead of putting somebody through the track towards conventional criminal legal processing, offers people an out. Now, there’s a lot of varieties of this and sometimes they go by different names. So, you could have situations where you tell someone if you do not take up some sort of, say, treatment program, then we will charge you after a person has been arrested. Or you could have it be the case that people self-refer, they bring themselves into these police run programs. Those tend to more often be called deflection. And when there’s a threat of noncompliance, those tend to be called police-led diversion. But overall, these are pretty similar. And they represent a departure from more conventional ways of responding to drug use.

These are different from other forms of diversion programs like drug courts, which is a pretty well-known example. Those started in the late 1980s and are quite widespread now. Whereas police led diversion and deflection programs really only originated in 2011. And most of the predominant models now really started up between 2011 and 2015. And since then, they’ve spread quite quickly. So, we, we’ve managed to come across two sources that counted the number of different programs a few years ago. And one counted over 600 and the other was over 850. And those are likely both undercounts for how many of those programs are in existence now. And so, these police-led deflection programs are pretty new and they’re pretty widespread.

And I want to just give you one concrete example to as how these would tend to work. Probably the best-known model is LEAD, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, which started in Seattle in 2011. And in that case, after someone is arrested but before they’re booked, people who are arrested on certain offenses, instead of being booked, they can be put in touch with a case manager who will then help that person meet their basic needs and their other goals, like substance use treatment. There’s some other details, but that’s the core idea of what these programs are.

FELBAB-BROWN: Since you spoke about Seattle, Beau, I wonder whether you want to weigh in or come in with some insights as to the changes in Oregon, in Washington, the decriminalization that took place there related to law enforcement. Again, we have a whole episode and paper by Doctor Keith Humphreys dedicated to that. But I welcome your thoughts on that as well.

KILMER: Roland, actually, we’ve been working together on another project actually analyzing the arrest data there. So, Roland, I don’t know if you want to say a little bit about that. I mean, it hasn’t been peer reviewed yet. But we are seeing some interesting trends.

NEIL: Yeah, so, I guess I’ll just give a little background briefly, which is that in 2021, in February 2021, Oregon became the first state to decriminalize the possession of most forms of drugs. And that is now being reversed and recriminalization is happening. And so, there’s this question about what did this decriminalization do? And there’s been a lot of talk about whether it was responsible for the spike in overdose deaths that happened in Oregon. And there’s been a lot of accounts tying those two things together. It’s worth noting in that respect that right when this M-110, this decriminalization went into effect, was also when fentanyl was hitting Oregon’s drug market, which you would have expected overdose to spike then anyways.

But focusing a bit more on the criminal legal consequences, the one thing which we can confidently say so far is that it led to a dramatic drop in drug possession arrests, and not really a noticeable change in other arrest patterns. And the work that Beau and I are currently doing looks at the racial aspect of this. How have disparities changed? And it’s interesting because it looks like basically it effectively removed racial disparities in drug possession, because there were still some drug possession laws that could be enforced. And so, there’s still some ways that you would expect to see disparities. But the law effectively removed racial disparities in drug arrest.

But there’s a lot that’s unknown about M-110. I haven’t really seen anything doing a good job so far looking at what it did to crime patterns. And I think it’s really interesting, right? because before this, in the U.S, context, it was only a theory as to what would happen if we decriminalized drugs. We could look to other countries, but different contexts. Now we have, like, a real case where that was done. And people are looking at it, but there’s still a lot of questions that we could answer with that that we don’t know the answers to yet.

FELBAB-BROWN: And what’s happened with decriminalization there, Beau, I’ll turn to you in just a second. Also of course it depends on the design of the decriminalization. And just like there is not one way to do law enforcement, there is not one way to do decriminalization. Beau, your thoughts if you wanted to add anything to the law enforcement aspects of the changes in Washington or Oregon?

KILMER: Well, I just I want to reiterate something that Roland said. These changes that happened in Oregon and Washington were happening at a time when fentanyl was hitting the West Coast very hard. It took a while for this to happen. And so, I think when we look at all of this literature, we need to keep that in mind. And also, when we start looking at some of the policy evaluations, we’re going to have to pay close attention to how the researchers account for fentanyl in the supply. And that’s difficult to do, but I think some researchers are focusing on that. And so, I think we’ll get some better insights from some of those studies.

But that’s important to keep in mind. And I think if you’re thinking about decriminalization in general, as Roland alluded to, look, a lot of other countries have decriminalized. There’s a lot of evidence out there on this in terms of decriminalizing possession. And so, I think it’s important to look at this in totality and remember the context of when these changes are happening.

FELBAB-BROWN: So, policy design matters, policy implementation matters and the context matters. Structural, institutional, cultural. All of which of course feeds into how important data is and how challenging is to get data in this context. So, one aspect of law enforcement and data that we haven’t talked about, Beau, are drug prices. How good are we at tracking drug prices and why should it matter?

KILMER: We used to be good at it. So, this is important because if you’re trying to evaluate some of these supply reduction efforts, if there really is a reduction in supply, we should see that reflected in the price. And it’s not just the retail price. Right? A dime bag will always be $10. But what’s inside that bag can change depending on law enforcement and decisions of the suppliers. So, from a research perspective, we actually care about what’s called the purity adjusted price, where we account for the purity of the fentanyl or the methamphetamine or the other substance that’s kind of in that particular package.

And it used to be the case that the DEA has a database where they have information on all of their seizures, all their undercover buys with the prices. And it’s a wealth of information. And they used to make those data more available to researchers. I mean, you couldn’t just download it, there’s a lot of things you had to do. But, you know, 25 years ago my colleagues at RAND were able to take those administrative data and create a price series for purity adjusted prices for cocaine, and heroin, as well as for methamphetamine.

What’s been difficult, though, and this has been multiple administrations, is it has been much harder to get those data from the DEA. And so, here we are in the middle of the worst drug overdose crisis in our country’s history, and we have limited data about what’s happening. Obviously, there are other ways you can get price information, but that was always the best source.

But fortunately, a couple of years ago there was that bipartisan, bicameral, multi-agency Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking. And fortunately, at RAND, we actually were tasked with doing the research for this. So, for a little bit of a time, I actually was able to get access to some of those data and crunch the numbers. And sure enough, we found that at the wholesale level in the United States, the purity adjusted price for fentanyl dropped by about 50% between 2016 and 2021.

Fentanyl was already cheap beforehand. You were already getting more bang for your buck. And so, that’s really important information to have, as I said, not only for kind of evaluating various programs, but also begins to understand the economics of these markets and how much money is actually going to drug trafficking organizations. So, that’s something I would like to see, making those data more available to researchers. I think it could really help us improve potentially some of the policy responses in our understanding of these markets.

FELBAB-BROWN: Well, absolutely. And just staying with that theme, Beau, in conclusion of the show before I come to Roland, what are some of the other key recommendations you would propose specifically for U.S domestic law enforcement vis-a-vis fentanyl or drug markets more broadly?

KILMER: Yeah, so, sticking with data, obviously making sure we have better information about purity adjusted prices is critical, not just for fentanyl but also when we start thinking about what drugs we’re going to be dealing with in 5 to 10 years. And as we’ve alluded to earlier, better information on jail admissions with respect to drugs, even if it’s pretrial, being able to get that information, I think is really important, it’s something that’s largely missing right now. And also, the role of drugs in kind of the revocations for probation and parole. For data, those are all things that I think it’s possible to improve upon. But we need to make it a priority.

I’d say my other recommendation is based on theory and evidence, there’s little justification for adopting these drug-induced homicide laws. In fact, the sentences for selling drugs or sharing drugs are already pretty lengthy without these sentence enhancements. And they’re just—

FELBAB-BROWN: —how … what what is the average? Can we say a range?

KILMER: It’s going to depend on the quantities seized and whether or not you’re a big kingpin. But, I mean, it could be years. And then these drug-induced homicide laws can add even more time. And like I said, there’s little reason to believe that they’re going to make any positive difference. And there’s also reasons to be concerned.

So, as I said earlier, politicians like to use that. It’s an easy thing to do to ratchet up those penalties, but realize that later on when you decide, oh, that wasn’t the right thing to do, it’s a lot harder to reduce those penalties and bring them back. So, you got to be really careful about that.

And, I guess the other thing I would say is, in those localities that are swamped with fentanyl, where the prices are already very low and if they’re putting a lot of effort into reducing supply with the hope that they’re going to increase the purity adjusted price and have some long term effect on consumption, I think it might be useful to step back and think about whether or not they should reallocate some of those resources. There’s a lot that drug law enforcement can do. I mean, we talked about some of the diversion or deflection programs. It’s entirely possible to reduce some of these open-air drug markets. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to reduce supply or you’re going to reduce consumption, but you can give the communities their neighborhoods back. And that’s a real harm that doesn’t necessarily get quantified as much as it should.

And also, we know that there’s a lot happening with respect to money, you know, money laundering, corruption. And so, I think there’s a lot more that can be done in that space.

And so, look, we’re in a new world now with these synthetics. So, I think it would be appropriate to step back and think about are we allocating our law enforcement resources in the best possible way?

FELBAB-BROWN: So, one issue is allocating resources between law enforcement, treatment, harm reduction, prevention—many of the issues that we talked on in various episodes of the show. But the other issue is where within law enforcement do we allocate the resources—also something that we were exploring with Professor Jon Caulkins on the episode and in his paper. Roland, would you like to add anything to the recommendations?

NEIL: Yeah, so, picking up on something which I was talking about before, which is the police-led deflection program. So, one thing which you probably noticed is that many of the overall trends we were talking about for things like arrest and incarceration, they’ve gone downwards over the past 10 to 15 years or so. But at the same time, business as usual is still business as usual when it comes to criminal legal enforcement against drugs. So, it remains the case that drug arrests are one of the main forms of arrest that police make. And so, even though there’s been declines in various forms of enforcement, that’s still the norm.

And I think that given the scale and severity of the fentanyl crisis that the U.S. is currently facing, now is a great time to innovate. And so, I would basically encourage agencies to continue trying out new police-led diversion deflection programs, try and instead of just arresting somebody again, again and again, just try and do what you can to get them support.

That said, the evidence base behind these programs, because they’re relatively new, is thinner than I think we’d like. Beau and I didn’t come across any randomized controlled trials. Many of the studies on these things don’t even have control groups at all. And so, as places continue to implement these and as they continue to spread, it would be really helpful if we got a sense for which ones worked best and in which ways. So, I think that’s a really key area.

Another thing which I had mentioned before is that there are still lessons to be learned from Oregon’s experiment in decrim. It’s one of these topics that’s really easy to immediately come to the conclusion that you have all the answers, just because it’s something that people have really strong feelings about. And what I encourage people is just to like, take a break if you feel that way. Take a step back and ask yourself, you know, what really can we learn from looking at this data? Because I think there’s still a lot to be learned there in terms of implementation, in terms of how it impacted various things we care about.

And the last thing which I would mention, which we haven’t mentioned at all before, is equipping police officers with naloxone and then training them to use it effectively. So, naloxone is a medication which is used to reverse opioid overdoses. And when used properly, it’s highly effective. It’s not a silver bullet miracle cure to the fentanyl epidemic, but it is one of the best tools available at our disposal. And it’s pretty widespread among U.S. police officers now. There’s one survey of over 2,000 agencies, and over 80% of those said that they had naloxone. And there’s also a lot of research to show that if you give it to your officers and if you train them how to use it, they can use it effectively to reverse overdoses and prevent death. So, that’s a really great tool that I think should be encouraged.

There are some challenges with it. Officers sometimes have misplaced fears about this idea that touching fentanyl can kill you, which isn’t true in any reasonable quantities. Right? It’s not a real risk. Among other more legitimate fears that they have in responding to these sorts of incidents. And you also, you have issues of officers who get fatigued from responding to overdoses again and again. And also, you have agencies that might have the naloxone but not distribute it to the officers who need to be using it. So, there are challenges in actually getting it effectively implemented. But I think if the officers who come across opioid overdoses could be equipped with and trained with naloxone, then that would be a very, very good step.

FELBAB-BROWN: Certainly sounds like an excellent recommendation. And your thrust, Roland and Beau, that we need to learn and learn dispassionately, objectively is a core part of the mission of the fentanyl project and of The Killing Drugs podcast.

So, enormous thanks to you for joining us today on the show and for your terrific paper.

KILMER: Thanks for the opportunity.

NEIL: Thanks so much.

FELBAB-BROWN: The Killing Drugs is a production of the Brookings Podcast Network. Many thanks to all my guests for sharing their time and expertise on this podcast and in this project.

Also, thanks to the team at Brookings who makes this podcast possible, including Kuwilileni Hauwanga, supervising producer; Fred Dews, producer; Gastón Reboredo, audio engineer; Daniel Morales, video editor; and Diana Paz Garcia, senior research assistant in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology; Natalie Britton, director of operations for the Talbott Center; and the promotions teams in the Office of Communications and the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. Katie Merris designed the compelling logo.

You can find episodes of The Killing Drugs wherever you like to get your podcasts and learn more about the show on our website at Brookings dot edu slash Killing Drugs.

I am Vanda Felbab-Brown. Thank you for listening.

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Two teen sisters drown at Coney Island Beach, police say

By tom shea • published july 5, 2024 • updated on july 6, 2024 at 6:42 pm.

Two teenage swimmers were pulled from the water off Brooklyn and rushed to the hospital in critical condition, according to police, but did not survive the night.

It was just after 8 p.m. Friday when calls came in about three people in the water off Coney Island near Stillwell Avenue and Riegelmann Boardwalk who needed rescuing, FDNY officials said. After searching for more than an hour, the two teens — an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old, both females — were pulled from the water.

Both teens were rushed to Coney Island Hospital in critical condition.

24/7 New York news stream: Watch NBC 4 free wherever you are

Law enforcement sources confirmed overnight that the teens, sisters, had died at the hospital. Their identities were not released.

Divers had been searching for a man believed to be in his 20s who was still reported missing in the water. Police later said they did not have a third missing swimmer.

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From Clinton to Trump, how talk about crime has changed since a landmark bill

Carrie Johnson

The conversation about public safety has changed a lot over the past 3 decades

Then-President Bill Clinton (left) hugs then-Sen. Joe Biden on Sept. 13, 1994, during a signing ceremony for the crime bill on the South Lawn of the White House. Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Thirty years ago this Friday, then-President Bill Clinton signed what amounted to the biggest federal intervention in crime and justice in a generation.

The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act paid to put more cops on the streets, imposed tougher sentences and provided federal funds to build more prisons.

In the years since, many of its architects have come to consider it a terrible mistake.

20 Years Later, Parts Of Major Crime Bill Viewed As Terrible Mistake

The conversation about public safety has changed a lot in the past few decades, said Nick Turner, who leads the Vera Institute of Justice.

“Crime is lower. Perceptions of crime are lower. People are more skeptical of tough-on-crime responses,” Turner said.

Violent crime still features in plenty of political attack ads this year. At this week’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump highlighted offenses that he alleged had been committed by immigrants.

But the excesses of the justice system also got a mention, when Vice President Harris brought up the Central Park Five. Those young men were convicted, then later exonerated, for the brutal assault of a jogger in New York City back in 1989. They also took the stage during the Democratic National Convention this summer.

This combination photo shows, clockwise from top left, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Korey Wise and Kevin Richardson, known as Central Park five. Former President Donald Trump famously took out a newspaper ad in New York City calling for the execution of the accused, in a case that roiled racial tensions locally and that many point to as evidence of a criminal justice system prejudiced against defendants of color.

The Central Park 5 are exonerated. Trump doesn't seem to think so

“The exonerated five were on stage acknowledging the depredations and the harms that can be caused, by a system that’s overly aggressive,” Turner said.

“Carrot and stick approach”

For all the talk about politicians being tough on crime or soft on crime, the federal government’s role in justice policy is limited. State and local authorities prosecute the vast majority of cases in the nation.

“Presidents do have a bully pulpit,” said Cully Stimson, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “Presidents can and should in my opinion spend a little time talking about your right to public safety. And that your right to public safety depends in large part on your community.”

Stimson said crime peaked in the early 1990s and then fell dramatically for the next few decades.

“The carrot-and-stick approach worked,” Stimson said. “That’s what drove down crime rates.”

The carrot is creating alternatives to incarceration like drug courts and veterans’ courts, and funding violence prevention programs.

The stick, he says, is accountability.

“And accountable does not mean jail,” he said. “In most instances most offenders don’t go to jail, nor should they go to jail, but they need to be held accountable.”

Changes to justice nationwide

Even Trump, in 2018, ended up signing the First Step Act, a law that allowed thousands of people in prison to leave early. States made even bigger changes to their justice systems in that era.

Thousands Freed From Prison Custody As DOJ Implements Sentencing Reform Law

“I mean, when I tell my students the United States no longer has the highest incarceration rate in the world, they’re usually shocked,” said Udi Ofer, a professor at Princeton University.

Crime rose during the pandemic, before dropping again.

Ofer said despite some backlash, state legislatures have passed laws that do everything from expanding access to parole to allowing judges to review long prison terms.

“Bipartisan progress on criminal justice reform continues despite conventional wisdom and political rhetoric that suggests otherwise,” Ofer said.

He’s reviewed dozens of polls this year and he’s noticed something consistent.

“Americans want and deserve to be safe and that is incredibly important,” Ofer said. “At the same time they also believe in fairness.”

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Perspective: Need for Critical Thinking in Police Training
By promoting critical thinking, rather than rote direction-following, throughout officers' careers, leaders can empower them to make and explain unbiased decisions. Critical thinking is an integral part of law enforcement decision-making. All departments should weave it into their cultures, from the academy to the field.
Real-life examples of critical thinking on police calls
5. It's a busy night and all officers are on calls. You're dispatched to an apartment building about a man with a gun. Upon arrival, the victim says a resident of the apartment building appeared intoxicated, was screaming in the pool area and was carrying a rifle. The victim told the suspect to be quiet and go inside.
Critical Thinking Training for Law Enforcement Recruits, Officers
5. Learn the criteria by which they should make judgments in all police encounters and situations. This includes objectivity, impartiality, and fairness. 6. Learn the barriers to critical thinking all police officers face, as do all humans - namely, egocentric and sociocentric thinking. 7. Learn to think through implications and consequences ...
Critical Thinking and Writing Skills: Essential for Officers
Officers must have well-honed critical thinking skills in order to come to a sound conclusion and make a bulletproof argument. Critical thinking is described as a persistent and skeptical mindset that always checks for accuracy and searches for potential flaws in the argument. Because of its adherence to the scientific method, critical thinking ...
How police officers can learn to think and write critically
Skillful writing teaches them how to form good arguments and think critically about investigations and evidence. Focusing on critical thinking and writing will enable officers to form good arguments and it will make them better, more well-rounded and effective officers. Reference: 1. Jackson M. Catching our eye: The alluring fallacy of knowing ...
Critical Thinking: A Core Task of Public Safety Employees
A.R.R. Critical thinking skills enable law enforcement personnel to analyze information and process it wisely in order to help determine the value of that information and make a decision. There are too many documented instances of a suspect telling an officer, "I can't breathe," only to hear the officer say, "If you're talking, you ...
PDF Improving Learning Outcomes in Police Academy Training
U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services 145 N Street NE Washington, DC 20530. To obtain details about COPS Office programs, call the COPS Office Response Center at 800-421-6770. Visit the COPS Office online at cops.usdoj.gov. e062312059 Published 2023.
PDF A Problem-Based Learning Manual for Training and Evaluating Police Trainees
1 The term "police" is meant to refer to all law enforcement practitioners at municipal, county and state agencies. ... ment of critical thinking skills. Most important, the trainee enlists the commu-nity as group members in his or her learning process. PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING (PBL) PBL is a learner-centered teaching
Teaching Critical Thinking in Public Safety
In public safety, there was simply no direction on critical thinking. In 1977, I started law school at Western State University (the largest law school in America back then, because they would take anybody) and it was early on in that four-year program where I was taught how to think. The process they gave me was called IRAC—and for four ...
Social and Emotional Intelligence in Public Safety
I started working in law enforcement during the late 1980s. At that time, the agencies I worked for were located in busy jurisdictions where we ran from one call to the next. ... Phillips W and Burrell D. (2008) Decision-making skills that encompass a critical thinking orientation for law enforcement professionals. International Journal of ...
PDF A Problem-Based Learning Manual for Training and Evaluating Police Trainees
1 The term "police" is meant to refer to all law enforcement practitioners at municipal, county and state agencies. ... The PBL process develops critical thinking and problem solving. These processes assist the trainer and the trainee in exploring other methods of devel-oping competency. These include the use of reading
(PDF) Decision-Making Skills That Encompass a Critical Thinking
Critical thinking skills can prove to be necessary for law enforcement professionals in acquiring new ways of thinking more proficiently and becoming more proactive in combating traditional ...
(PDF) Decision-making skills that encompass a critical thinking
Page 144 When engaging in critical thinking, law enforcement professionals should create multiple solutions to problems by constantly questioning and challenging their strengths, and examining decision-making preferences and practices. This process is about thinking collectively and strategically about crime prevention.
Decision-Making Skills That Encompass a Critical Thinking Orientation
This article discusses the challenges of engaging in critical thinking skills for law enforcement professionals and the importance of making sound decisions in the wake of new emerging threats that stem from domestic to international crime. Critical thinking skills are inevitably becoming a new business function for all types of organisations.
2019
This training is based upon, and consistent with: MCJA 2019 Mandatory Lesson Plan: Critical Thinking in Law Enforcement Instructional Goal It is vitally important for law enforcement officers to be objective when dealing with any given situation. By thinking critically about the facts before them, officers can avoid making errors in judgement about the situation. Utilizing […]
Decisionmaking Skills That Encompass a Critical Thinking Orientation
Also, critical thinking skills in law enforcement and public safety should involve thinking of different scenarios and weighing probable solutions for every situation. Critical thinking skills are inevitably becoming a new business function for all types of organizations. Traditional management methodologies of some law enforcement agencies may ...
National Tactical Officers Association
The student will be required to discuss a tactical plan based on the principles taught in the first session. The first webinar session will cover principles of the P.I.E.T.O. Critical Thinking Model. The instructor will present in detail this concept and how it can be utilized in the tactical environment as well as other law enforcement operations.
(PDF) i HIGHER ORDER, CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN ...
Law enforcement requires the officer to invoke reason and critical thinking skills in order to solve intricate problems in real time, on the job.
Discussion as a Strategy for Educating Law Enforcement Officers
Students prefer to become actively involved in their learning and use their experiences as a resource for others. 1 Many components of law enforcement training now include andragogical, or self-directed and practice-based, approaches to address the needs and interests of LEOs. 2 Such changes in curriculum help officers prepare for what they will encounter in community policing as well.
Courses
Critical Thinking for Law Enforcement Better Thinking leads to Better Decisions leads to Better Public Service. This course outlines the processes for thinking objectively and critically about data processes and procedures related to law enforcement activities / investigations. Learn how to critically (and accurately) examine and process data ...
Developing Critical Thinking Leadership Skills in Homeland Security
Critical thinking involves learning how to apply experienced-based, team-based, and formal problem-solving methods to situations as they arise. When applied to homeland security, critical thinking means that intelligence and law enforcement personnel should develop multiple solutions to problems by questioning and challenging their strengths ...
Critical Thinking
description. Critical Thinking and Intelligence Analysis. This work builds on earlier publications in this series, particularly Occasional Papers Two, Six, and Seven; Getting Intelligence Right: The Power of Logical Procedure, Intelligence Essentials for Everyone, and Intelligence Analysis in Theater Joint Intelligence Centers: An Experiment in ...
Rethinking domestic law enforcement in the fentanyl crisis
Host Vanda Felbab-Brown talks with RAND researchers Beau Kilmer and Roland Neil about U.S. domestic law enforcement responses to the fentanyl crisis. Kilmer and Neil highlight a decline in drug ...
Brooklyn news: Teens pulled from water off Coney Island
Both teens were rushed to Coney Island Hospital in critical condition. 24/7 New York news stream: Watch NBC 4 free wherever you are Law enforcement sources confirmed overnight that the teens ...
Landmark crime bill seen in more critical light 30 years later
Landmark crime bill seen in more critical light 30 years later Crime is a perennial issue in ... The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act paid to put more cops on the streets ...
Homicide charges filed in connection with Ronan man's death
Edwin "Ed" Loder, 67, was found dead in the Jocko Canyon area last week, according to law enforcement, following a week-long search after he went missing from his home under suspicious circumstances.